How bad is the USC football train wreck?

Jun 25, 2004, 6:33 PM

USC Offseason Transfers, and their Cost:
*RB Regis Edgerson
*RB Kenny Irons
*QB Bennett Swygert
*WR Aryhel Freeman
*FS Andre Hemphill
*OT Jon Hall
*LB Josh Johnson
*FB Brandon Schweitzer

In the days after 63-17, I had a suspicion it was going to be bad. Just how bad it's been, though, has shocked even me. I've heard USC fans claiming these guys were all second-or-third-stringers, or non-contributors...if so, that's an amazing amount of dead weight to carry on a roster.

Clemson's coaches would have screamed in genuine pain if you told them to cut 8 non-senior veterans off the roster this past offseason. Who would you cut? At Clemson, the older guys tend to be starting, their younger understudies play a ton of snaps, and the "non-contributors" tend to be younger guys who will very likely progress...there just isn't that much dead weight on Clemson's roster. If you started cutting even 3rd-stringers off the bottom of Clemson's roster, you'd start losing guys like RB Reggie Merriweather, OL Chris Capote, DE Brandon Cannon, WR Chris Jefferson...Clemson's coaches moved Heaven and Earth to get those guys into a Clemson uniform, and they'd howl like branded calves if these "3rd-string non-contributors" started transferring! Losing these kind of guys may not hurt much today (though it does effect competition, and it hurts more than is immediately apparent) but it flat-out kills you tomorrow. These guys are your future.

Clemson just lost LB/ROV Kelvin Morris, for instance...and never doubt it, losing him was a blow, because he would have backed up both starting whip LB Eric Sampson and roverback Jamaal Fudge, given Clemson injury insurance behind both players, and played a ton of quality snaps in relief of both guys with very little drop-off, allowing the Tigers to keep a fresh, quality player in at all times. Now they'll have to play somebody younger and less experienced in Morris's stead, and hope that guy can step up. And sorry...unless he's a phenom, that guy won't be quite as good. Morris was talented, and he had experience. And that matters a ton, in college football.

Losing Morris stings. He'd have been a valuable backup at both rover and whip. (Image courtesy of Tigerillustrated.com)

Losing 8 veterans - out of 85 total available scholarships - is a tremendous blow to a college team's depth. When you add up what the USC coaching staff has invested into these 8 guys in terms of the time, energy, and attention it took to recruit them, develop their skills on and off the field, and tutor them in the system, you start appreciating what a loss these 8 guys collectively represent. And they'll be replaced by guys not as experienced, not as knowledgeable, not as game-ready. Young players make more stupid mistakes and fewer game-turning big plays. Young players don't play with the same assertiveness and confidence, and young players simply aren't as physically developed, or show the same leadership. Veterans have a quality it's hard to measure, something that doesn't always show up on NCAA football when you play it on an X-Box. But it matters on real football fields, more than a little.

I don't think it's over, either. Persistent rumblings about other possible, higher-level USC transfers, are abounding as well, most notably about QB Blake Mitchell. Mitchell's transfer, if it were to occur, would be a particular blow, IMHO, because he represents the best chance a future coaching staff would have to put a skilled, by-then-veteran QB at the helm of a structured passing offense. But even worse than the loss of bodies is the clear and unmistakeable lack of confidence in the coaching staff these transfers represent. Every last one of these kids left USC amidst a trail of broken hopes and often broken promises, and the accumulated weight of so much collateral damage has to have had just an enormous effect on the Gamecocks' collective confidence and morale. If the Gamecock fan base has lost confidence in Holtz's ability to deliver the team to the promised land of bowl games and competitive football, so too, it seems, have a great many players. The floodgate of offseason transfers seems particularily indicative of that.

This USC team is in bad-trouble...just how bad, I suspect, is not yet immediately apparent. And their future prospects are not much brighter. USC fans like to make much of "back-to-back Top-10 recruiting classes"...but the bulk of those guys (as Scott Rhymer over at CUTigers.com clearly showed in his excellent - and scathing - recent article "Debunking the Myth") were either JUCO's who busted - often in spectacular fashion - and have since graduated, or players who are even now in the process of transferring away en masse.

What's left? Very little. Shockingly little, given the fanfare with which Holtz arrived at USC more than five years ago.

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How bad is the USC football train wreck?

very good post...insightful***

LMAO...10% of USC's scholarship players left this off-season***

Honestly? I don't even read all of your posts anymore.

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